


To His Watson Going to Bed

by okapi



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: 221B Ficlet, Inspired by Poetry, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Poetry, john donne
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-12-17 12:25:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11851545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okapi/pseuds/okapi
Summary: Holmes recites poetry while Watson undresses. PWP. Poetry + prose.





	1. Verse + Prose

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ancientreader](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ancientreader/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the lovely [ancientreader](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ancientreader/pseuds/ancientreader), who was its inspiration.
> 
> The verse is a parody of John Donne’s poem [“To His Mistress Going to Bed.”](https://genius.com/John-donne-to-his-mistress-going-to-bed-annotated) Chapter 2 of this posting is the verse alone for anyone who’d like to read it straight-through without prose interruptions. 
> 
> The prose is six 221bs. The backstory to the wooden box beside Watson's bed is described in my ficlet [The Wooden Sea](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11550711/chapters/26480631).

“I am feeling rather metaphysical tonight, Watson.”

“Very physical, I’d say.”

Finding Holmes naked in my bed should have surprised me. My reaction, or lack of, was not due to him—the tableau itself was unprecedented in our association and mildly alarming from the perspective of my personal privacy—but rather a result of my own dulled, muddled state.

No doubt the whiskey flowing through my veins, though much diluted by the bracing journey home, contributed.

Also, I was happy.

“You won more than you lost,” observed Holmes.

I nodded and dropped my watch in a wooden box on the bedside table. Too much success at cards made me anxious for the future calamity that would balance the scales; coming out modestly ahead was my preferred way of ending the evening.

Well, second preferred, I thought as I raked an eye up and down Holmes’s nude form.

I inhaled, noting the sharp fragrance of unguent. Holmes obviously had something naughty in mind, but I was a patient man as well as a drunk one, so I moved slowly to the wardrobe, fiddling with my collar, waiting for my cue.

Holmes was gorgeously stretched out like a figure in a Renaissance painting, arm balanced on bent knee, sheet draped invitingly at the waist.

He met my gaze, licked his lips, and began.

> “Come, Watson, come, no slumber sweet draws nigh.
> 
> Take pains and painstakingly slow I lie. And…”

He frowned.

Poetry. Now that was a surprise.

“Sigh?” I suggested.

“And almost, but not quite, die,” he replied, his voice dripping with self-deprecating charm.

Then he continued.

> “A sleuth-hound upon finding dearest near
> 
> leaves cold the trail of puzzle odd. And—“

Another pause.

“Plot unclear!” I interjected.

“And myst’ry queer,” he said, drawing and clipping the words so that they curled like ribbons of velvet smoke.

He raised eyebrow as if to ask ‘More?’

I shot him a hard look that said, ‘Dash it all, man, I’d have to be the coldest haddock in the market to say no!’

He laughed and made a ‘go on’ gesture with two hands.

Go on?

I was expected to compose poetry about him?

Oh, well. I supposed it was only sporting to give it a try.

I pressed my lips together and puffed out a bit of air as I slumped against the wardrobe.

Let’s see.

There once was a detective named Holmes…

Holmes barked.

I glared.

Then he spoke very slowly, as if to a dim child, and, with each word, that dim child grew brighter and, finally, understood.

“Would you be so very kind, my dearest Watson, and prepare your handsome self for bed?”

> Off with that drab twill! Be gone somber grey!
> 
> Let taper-light a warmer hue betray.
> 
> Unpin that collar, loose the noose most brute,
> 
> Release all ties that bind your charms hirsute.
> 
> Cuffs, too, for early-late’s the witching hour
> 
> for one under your sheet, under your pow’r.
> 
> Off with that woolen sheath, a husk most loathed,
> 
> for it knows your shiver, sweat, first when clothed.
> 
> Dear God! A deity invoked for sight divine.
> 
> I beg you trade your wools for velvet mine.
> 
> Won’t you rid yourself of all and show
> 
> the marble pillar on you that does grow?
> 
> Now bare those feet to lover’s eager glance,
> 
> to him who knows their curl, their arch, their dance.
> 
> Pray tell, how Lucifer’s dark spell, un-kissed,
> 
> which makes one ache and quake for what’s not missed
> 
> yet, manifests its shadow-fingered lust,
> 
> compels the thrust, the plough of beastly crust.
> 
> Thus hobbled, if spare faculties survive,
> 
> recall that needs are musts when devils drive.
> 
> Grant leave for lips to follow in hands’ wake,
> 
> to give and, only when well-bidden, take.
> 
> Why should I flaunt empire’s blade, unholy cross;
> 
> and claim what is not mine with vilest dross?
> 
> I’d rather lap upon your brave new shore,
> 
> become well-versed in local custom, lore.
> 
> The binding’s one, the chapters many-paged,
> 
> desire un-sheaved, asunder rent, uncaged.

Line by line, Holmes had inched forward and now he was perched at the foot of the bed, legs folded under him like an expectant feline, his hungry eyes fixed on the sizable bulge between my legs.

I defy anyone upon being serenaded thusly, with the sincere sentiment of a lover and the articulation of a career thespian, to remain unmoved.

I’d done as Holmes had bidden, divesting myself of wear, bit by bit, slowly and carefully and silently, without flourish or pause, and now I stood before him, barefoot, in laced drawers, with heart melted and prick as stiff as iron.

The former, though ostensibly beating loudly in my chest, was in his delicate hands; the latter was straining against its thin, woolly confines.

And though I was never, by force of will, half the actor that Holmes was by his very nature, his poetry had encouraged me, emboldened me, to perform.

A bit.

I ran two palms down my stomach and around my prick, accentuating the outline. Mine was not an unusually long shaft, but it was a thick one, which appeared even thicker in its current swaddling.

Holmes liked its girth. He’d made me aware of his appreciation on many occasions. And in that moment, I could see the bloody words forming in his mind.

_Dear God, Watson, the burn!_

I ran my hands once, twice, thrice, around my prick, then, wishing to prolong the seduction, just once along it.

When the wool betrayed a dark, but growing, pin-point of dampness, Holmes bit his lip.

I slowly unlaced the drawers.

And turned.

Holmes growled.

I hooked my thumbs beneath the waist of the drawers and pulled the wool down below my buttocks. Then I looked over my shoulder and blew him a kiss.

_I’m playing your game, you dim child._

He grinned, then touched his fingertips to his lips.

I kneaded my buttocks in poor imitation of Holmes’s ministrations, then turned back to face him.

And curled the drawers just low enough that my prick sprang free.

Holmes gasped softly.

As before, I caressed the base, giving the shaft itself only a single stroke. Then I slipped my hands beneath the bunched wool to fondle my sacs.

I coughed.

Holmes looked up.

I raised an eyebrow as if to ask, ‘Is there more?’

He shot me a hard look that said, ‘I’d be as dull as most of the criminal class of London if there wasn’t!’

And thank goodness, it was Holmes doing the reciting for once the poetry resumed, I was far too gone to do anything but leak and tremble, grip the furnishings and forget to breathe.

> Laid bare, and thus, nearer— _my God!_ —to thee,
> 
> at last, my eyes see what they’ve longed to see!
> 
> The veils of good society now felled;
> 
> fears quieted; anxiety near quelled.
> 
> With all due circumspection, piety,
> 
> let’s set ablaze upright propriety
> 
> and do recline, as one, decline, as one
> 
> to speculate or comment frank upon
> 
> which scarred, carved, left-bent skeleton key
> 
> which lock of box hewn from cursed fig-less tree
> 
> which slides disguised through cylinder and pin
> 
> which stoves gilt troves in borogroves of tin
> 
> which when stitched to which along slotted seam
> 
> ignites bewitched of blithe besotted dream
> 
> which expires like clotted cream— _oh_ —Shall we not
> 
> extend ourselves and shelve, ‘mongst dusty lot,
> 
> this metaphysical,
> 
> metaphorical
> 
> categorically
> 
> bloody
> 
> rot?

Holmes trembled.

I trembled.

Holmes stared.

I stared.

And neither dared attempt still his own body, or the other’s, or even look away for a short, silent, tremulous eternity.

Then somehow my feet managed to carry me forward, and I eased behind Holmes, one leg bent under me on the bed and one dangling off the side.

“Beautiful. Thank you,” I whispered and pressed my lips—my lips alone, no other parts of our bodies had yet touched—to the ridge of his shoulder. “I’d have you write it down, preserve it, but…”

“In this world, especially in ours, the written word is a weapon, is it not? Letters, documents, even a calling card, all loaded guns. You could have me prosecuted for criminal libel.”

His voice was harsh.

Mine was harsher.

“You could counter with charges of sodomy and gross indecency.”

We shuddered.

He turned his head, looking not quite over his shoulder. “We are that wicked…”

“…but we are not that Wilde,” I replied.

He dropped his head and the matter and smiled.

“But the poem, Holmes, lovely metaphors. Clever, too, naturally.”

“Did you understand the last one? Because, you see, it was a play on my Christian name—“

I bit him, and he squeaked like the fourth step of the stairs.

“Yes, I understood, Conceiting Beauty.”

He hadn’t even time to groan.

As soon as the words had left my lips, I grabbed him ‘round the waist and twisted, launching him face-first onto the bed and launch myself atop him. I pinned him, then rolled to the side to run a hard, claiming hand from the sleek, dark hair on his head to the sweet undercurve of his buttock and back.

I gripped him by a fisted clump of hair and yanked his head back until our eyes met.

“Holmes, I will be fucking you,” I growled, then kissed his cheek, “then I will be swallowing your magnificent, sinisterly-curved prick until you spend yourself down my throat. Then we shall take gentlemanly turns bringing each other to crisis until exhaustion owns us. Objections?”

“Only to your tedious indulgence, and the commensurate delay, in explaining your plan rather than executing it.”

I released his head with a curse and mounted him properly.

“You make yourself at home in my bed, finger yourself ‘til your gaping like an old tart,” a rough probing of his rim confirmed this, “spew the loveliest, most heart-melting treacle at me ‘til I’m convulsing, then expect me not to—oh, _fuck_ , Holmes!”

“I adore you, Watson. Beyond reason, beyond words.”

“You stretch so beautifully, love.”

“It is a bit like poetry, isn’t it? The breeching.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!


	2. Verse Only

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the verse without the prose. Like Donne's, it started out as 24 couplets in iambic pentameter, but then got wonky in places.

Come, Watson, come, no slumber sweet draws nigh.

Take pains and painstakingly slow I lie. And sigh. And almost, but not quite, die.

A sleuth-hound upon finding dearest near

leaves cold the trail of puzzle odd. And plot unclear. And myst’ry queer.

Off with that drab twill! Be gone somber grey!

Let taper-light a warmer hue betray.

Unpin that collar, loose the noose most brute,

Release all ties that bind your charms hirsute.

Cuffs, too, for early-late’s the witching hour

for one under your sheet, under your pow’r.

Off with that woolen sheath, a husk most loathed,

for it knows your shiver, sweat, first when clothed.

 _Dear God!_ A deity invoked for sight divine.

I beg you trade your wools for velvet mine.

Won’t you rid yourself of all and show

the marble pillar on you that does grow?

Now bare those feet to lover’s eager glance,

to him who knows their curl, their arch, their dance.

Pray tell, how Lucifer’s dark spell, un-kissed,

which makes one ache and quake for what’s not missed

yet, manifests its shadow-fingered lust,

compels the thrust, the plough of beastly crust.

Thus hobbled, if spare faculties survive,

recall that needs are musts when devils drive.

Grant leave for lips to follow in hands’ wake,

to give and, only when well-bidden, take.

Why should I flaunt empire’s blade, unholy cross;

and claim what is not mine with vilest dross?

I’d rather lap upon your brave new shore,

become well-versed in local custom, lore.

The binding’s one, the chapters many-paged,

desire un-sheaved, asunder rent, uncaged.

Laid bare, and thus, nearer— _my God!_ —to thee,

at last, my eyes see what they’ve longed to see!

The veils of good society now felled;

fears quieted; anxiety near quelled.

With all due circumspection, piety,

let’s set ablaze upright propriety

and do recline, as one, decline, as one

to speculate or comment frank upon

which scarred, carved, left-bent skeleton key

which lock of box hewn from cursed fig-less tree

which slides disguised through cylinder and pin

which stoves gilt troves in borogroves of tin

which when stitched to which along slotted seam

ignites bewitched of blithe besotted dream

which expires like clotted cream— _oh_ —Shall we not

extend ourselves and shelve, ‘mongst dusty lot,

this metaphysical,

metaphorical

categorically

bloody

rot?


End file.
